Has Content Creation Reached It’s Tipping Point?
The term Tipping Point was coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book of the same name which seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. As the subtitle sums up perfectly, “The Little Things That Make A Big Difference.”
I’ve been sitting on the Disruption Prediction of 2022 for 4 years now and I believe the time has come that this little change in human behavior noted for the first time ever in 2018 will lead to big changes in the way we consume and create content.
Jesse, Why Did You Wait 4 Years To Tell Us This?
In June 2018 I was pitching a movie I wrote at an industry conference in LA. Amongst the many break-out sessions, pitch meetings and seminars was a sparsely attended, incredibly nerdy, industry analytical report by Promethean Research which of course, I was in attendance for.
As expected, the seminar was dry, tedious and data-laden, until the presenter reported an unheard-of event within human behavior, and that’s when I perked up.
They noted that, for the first time ever, humankind was willing to pay more for less of something. In the context of the world of entertainment, people would rather pay $5/month for a single channel of curated content such as Shudder, as opposed to paying less for their cable company’s bundle of 200+ uncurated channels.
This was an early Tipping Point indicator of how people were adjusting to the overabundance of available content. Discovering new content was becoming so overwhelming that viewers were experiencing decision paralysis in choosing what to watch. The pain of this indecisiveness was so great that they were willing to pay more for someone to assist them in making a quicker decision.
It has now been proven that people are willing to replace quantity (100’s of channels of mediocre content) with quality (Pre-curated substance.) Simply because they want someone to assist them through their indecisiveness or increase the likelihood of discovering something new which appeals to them.
Jesse, Is My Content Doomed? Is Content Creation Dead?
If you’ve invested anything into content creation you’re probably already shoring up your defenses and mounting your offense to debate me on this.
Rest assured, this is not a blanket statement that applies to all content creators out there (yet!) however if you are in a commoditized market and/or are in the business of creating “commoditized content” I would say the end is nigh friends.
As the need to cull unneeded content from our televisions, social feeds, and collective lives continues to manifest as tiny changes in our day to day they will culminate in a sociological BIG DIFFERENCE that will affect our everyday lives and more importantly your business.
Many businesses out there create content (and I use the term create very loosely) simply to be part of the conversation on social media. While posting photos of the latest delivery of swag with your company logo on it, or congratulating Karen in HR on her birthday may have cut it in the past, this type of commoditized content will eventually hurt your business and lead to people including you in their next culling of unessential content from their lives, leaving your brand out in the cold.
